


Beignets + Shots

by evangelions



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Angst, Bakery and Coffee Shop, Coffee, Coffee Shops, Drunk Hinata Shouyou, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Poetic, Poetry, Prose Poem, Rough Kissing, Shounen-ai, Slam Poetry, Summer, spoken word poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-11 23:27:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7911688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evangelions/pseuds/evangelions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a rainy morning in New York City, and Kageyama is a bit early for his morning class- there's a coffeeshop nearby. He believes it's too early for slam poetry, but goes in anyways.</p><p>Temptation comes in the form of a problematic, orange-headed alcohlic whose poetry sounds like his ears are on fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beignets + Shots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [howtopaintourskies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/howtopaintourskies/gifts).



“ _Fuck_ ,” Kageyama breathes. The rain is pouring now, and he glances at the backseat of the car he’s driving, where one huge black sweater along with his earbuds and a clear plastic raincoat wait. He faces the window and breathes like he’s huffing through his nose. He watches his breath climb up, challenging the raindrops, and he’s frustrated.

He admits to himself that 6:30AM New York Christmas rain was beautiful, but he couldn’t see a single fucking thing. He turns the wipers on, hoping they’ll help with the blindness. 

They don’t.

He sighs, and tugs at the roots of his hair. He checks the time again; _6:34_. He shrugs to himself, and he admits that he couldn’t drive in this weather. He looks around, and looked for anywhere he could stay for the next hour. 

_Big Owl’s Pet Store_  
_Pretty Boy Ice Cream_  
_Crow’s Book Store_  
_Coffee Words_  
_Jima’s Sushi_

He squints a little harder at the Coffee Words sign, trying to read the words under the quaint, antique sign.

 _Coffee Shop and Bakery._  
And under it, in a streaky, handwritten chalk sign:  
_Poetry Slam today!!_

Coffee Words it is.

He looks down, checking his clothes to see if they could survive the downpour outside. 

A blue shirt with an embroidered peach on the pocket in the right corner.  
Black skinny jeans.  
Doc Martens.

Of course not.

He leans backward and grabs everything sitting in the seat diagonally behind him. Tugging the sweater and raincoat on, he’s careful not to press the horn and disturb anyone. He presses his earbuds into his ears and connects them to his phone.

He puts it on shuffle.

***

The rain runs down his coat like the drops are racing, and some have somehow even gotten into his mouth- he has no idea. He tastes the grime and dirt of New York City. 

He spits it out.

He pays no attention to the music streaming from his earbuds, and instead on the _crunch crunch_ of the snow beneath his feet, on the _slssh slssh_ of his shoes sliding higher than the snow, on the _boom boom_ of the rain hitting the road next to him.

He passes Coffee Words twice before he finally finds it.

***  
He pushes the door open, and the first thing he notices is that the bell sounds like frozen peas.

He breathes in the aroma of the cafe, and sniffs deeper when he realizes it smells like snow and gingerbread and black coffee.

It smells like Christmas in a city that’s too grimy with poverty to remember the presents and rhythms of falling snow.

He gently tucks the door in behind him, and sheds his coat; he hangs it on a mahogany coat hanger just to the left of the door, and was about to take a step forward when the barista calls out welcome.

He doesn’t lift his head, and grunts back. 

He peers through the grainy curtain of black and pink hair, and notices all the solo chairs surrounding a mini platform were actually beanbags, and that tiny wooden tables patterned with stickers were dotted randomly here and there. 

He walks as quickly as he can to an empty table far away from the yellow light shining on the platform. He sits down as quickly as he took to walk there, and opens his phone. 

He stops the music, and pops his earbuds out.

While waiting for an already-hustling barista to come and take his order, he traces his fingers over the various stickers stuck all over the table.

There were a few cat stickers here and there, but the most common type was one of a black crow.

He finds one on the underside of the table, and slides his finger over it until he catches a crook between the wood and the sticky side.

He is half-tempted to peel it off when someone reaches his table.

“ _Hey, I’m Nishinoya, what can I get you?_ ”

He decides that he can’t avoid people any longer because right now, it would be rude not to look someone in the eye. 

“ _I’ll have a latte, thanks._ ”

“ _No problem._ ”

He looks around the quaint shop, wondering when the slam would actually start. He spots a sign hanging above the bar saying “ _6:55- Poetry Slam begins!!_ ”

He checks his phone again- _6:52_. 

He deicides he’s hungry, and waves Nishinoya over again.

“ _Hey, can I actually have a beignet along with the coffee?_ ” Nishinoya nods feverishly, scribbling it down in a notepad.

His eyes wander as the waiter scribbles it down; he pays no attention to the words floating around him but lets himself indulge in the strange bittersweetness this place seemed to hold. 

There was a man at the bar, maybe around Kageyama’s age, and his shoulders seemed to be heaving. 

No. He couldn’t be Kageyama’s age; he was much too short and scrawny, with his elbows peeking out and his bright orange hair thinning at random spots.

“ _Of course, but-_ ”

Kageyama nods back, not really paying attention to Nishinoya.

He keeps his gaze on the ginger man, thoroughly intrigued. He doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until he lets it out in a sigh when the man stopped shaking. 

He watches him watching his own coffee arrive (black), and is still watching when he quietly draws a silver flask out of his jacket pocket- and openly stares when he grips the bottle like he’s grappling with life.

He doesn’t notice Nishinoya has left, or that the lights around the stage begin to flicker.

He doesn’t see some barista with silver hair walk his way with a beignet and his coffee, and he grabs his phone with its trailing earbuds and draws himself closer to the man, closer and closer, until he finds himself with his shoes, sweater, and heart right next to him.

And what he witnesses next he had never seen before.

The man, as if a sudden bout of desperation had possessed him, gripped the bottle and popped the cap open.

He whispers, “ _I’m going to die_ ,” and pours the whole damn thing into his tiny cup of coffee- and surprisingly, the contents don’t spill. 

He dunks a pinky finger with nails like black half-moons in the cup, and breathes it in slowly, as if it were more needles and morphine than coffee grounds and spices.

He drops the cup down again, letting the ceramic tink tink tink on the wooden bar table. 

No one pays attention except Kageyama as the ginger man drops his head into his right hand and clutches the corner of the table with the left. 

Kageyama still feels numb after the sliver-haired barista, whose name tag read Suga, patiently places a dish with a beignet and a saucer with his cup of coffee in front of him, and whispers _enjoy your food_ what seemed a million times to Kageyama. He absently tears a chunk of the beignet off, and bites into it, feeling the hollow of his stomach burn away at him. 

He looks at the latte, curious to see what design they might have made, but the lights had been turned off.

He swivels his head, searching for a light source, when his eyes land on the stage where some guy with a lot of freckles was reciting something. 

He checks his phone again, and discovers that time passed faster than he believed; _6:57_.

He takes another bite out of the beignet; feels the sugar sifting around his tongue like sweet sand, and sips another morsel of coffee of which he is barely able to down. 

He closes his eyes and savors the taste of sugar and coffee beans; he is barely able to think about anything else.

He opens his eyes to see that, apparently, two people had gone after the first kid (according to the list, that had been Yamaguchi), and now the last two people that’d signed up had bailed on them- they were asking for volunteers.

He considered going- he had never been bad at poetry, but he’d always thought his language lacked flavor.

His train of thought was interrupted when he sees a blur of orange hair and pale skin stagger to the stage.

The man grips the microphone with both of his shaking hands (they’re so shaky that if this building had been built on them, there’d be earthquakes every hour). 

“ _I volunteer_ ,” he says. 

His voice is rough-hewn and unstable, like a bomb- liable to throw flames everywhere at any given point. 

Kageyama is fascinated.

He waits for him to begin.

***

He speaks about anger and sins, and the thin paper-like quality of his- _their_ \- lives, and everything floors Kageyama so much, the way he sometimes screams his words, or hits everything with anger and vengeance. 

He speaks like he’s falling in love with the darkness.

The ginger man finishes, and there is a stunned silence in the audience below as he staggers across the stage and collapses like his legs abandoned him onto the carpeted floor. 

He looks across at the audience, something in his gaze wretched, as he glares at them like they are the world who hated him. No one says anything for a beat, until something seems to happen and a voice rises like rolling thunder and screams.

“ _What’s your name?_ ”

He looks around, looking for the inquisitor, and shrugs to himself. 

“ _You don’t need to know._ ”

He staggers out the door- when had he started standing?- and he tries to run except he’s swaying from side to side like a leaf on a tree, and he barely makes it out the door before Kageyama pushes his chair back, letting the chair fall and bang, and takes off in a run after the ginger poet. 

He forgets his raincoat.

He doesn’t say anything, only feels the warmth from his phone vibrating against his chest from his shirt’s breast pocket. He keeps running, tearing through the wind and rain, tearing through a fucking monsoon, until he finds a head of orange hair in what could be counted as a sliver of an alley and loses his mind.

He doesn’t know why he does these things. 

But he is overcome with a tumbling, tumultuous desire, and he grabs the ginger poet by the collar of his shirt and wrenches him to his feet. He kisses him in the dark, the rain soaking them until they’re both cold as hell, and he hugs the smaller man to his own chest- his phone is banging against his chest, vibrating like crazy, but he pays no heed. 

He kisses him, and kisses him, because Kageyama Tobio falls in love with strangers whose eyes look like smashed bottles of Hennessy, whose poetry is more claws and fish hooks than words and ribbons.

He falls in love like he’s choking, until asphyxiation turns him blue in the face.

He falls in love like he’s a shooting star and he’s on fire.

But for now, he thinks of kissing boys in the rain with lips that taste like tequila with the slight sugary cotton of beignets and coffee settling like a blanket, settling like the rain over their heads.

**Author's Note:**

> lmao u thought it was gonna be fluffy didn't u lmAo


End file.
